Arkansas Disability Determination office outlines federal rules, claims volume and $35M fraud recoveries

The director of Arkansas’s Disability Determination Services (DDS) briefed the committee on how the federal disability program works and described program trends and recent fraud-recovery results. The director emphasized that federal criteria — not state standards — determine eligibility for Social Security Disability benefits, and observed that roughly one-third of initial applications are allowed within 90 days while the remainder are denied or appealed, with subsequent hearings permitting a minority of additional allowances.

The office reported about 375–450 employees (depending on workload) and an average processing time of roughly 91 days. Arkansas carries roughly 235,000 beneficiaries on the rolls (about 9.25% of the eligible population), including both title II worker-based benefits and title XVI SSI beneficiaries; the speaker noted a significant portion of beneficiaries are SSI and that disability payments total about $224,000,000 per month in Arkansas (about $2.7 billion per year).

The director described a multiagency fraud-collaboration—created in 2016 with the attorney general, inspector general and SSA—that has saved taxpayers more than $35,000,000 through recoveries and other enforcement actions. Committee members asked about timelines for administrative law-judge appeals (Arkansas averages ~15 months to hearing, compared with higher averages elsewhere) and about the fiscal implications of growing beneficiary rolls amid national Social Security financing concerns.